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TRUTH BE TOLD
Can you handle the truth? Samar Khan’s Shaurya is an adaptation of Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men. You can’t blame him. No one turned up at the airport for Samar’s debut Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye. Also, sometimes you love a film so much, you just have to get it out of your system. Your own way. That’s why Shaurya is an adaptation and quite an intelligent one at that. Not a lousy designer copy, as Race was of Goodbye Lover. If you have had “the courage to face the truth”, watch Shaurya.
Set in the army, as opposed to the navy in the original, the film is about an inept army lawyer Siddhanth (Rahul) forced to defend an army captain Javed Khan (Dobriyal) accused of killing a fellow armyman. Thanks to a local Srinagar reporter Kavya (Minissha) Rahul has a boys-to-men transformation.
And then there’s Kay Kay Menon as Brigadier Pratap. It may sound blasphemous but Kay Kay sometimes does Jack Nicholson better than Jack Nicholson. In the history of cinema there have been some rare occasions when an actor has appeared for a scene or two and left an indelible mark (remember Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross?). Kay Kay does something like that in Shaurya. He’s got just two-and-a-half scenes but that’s reason enough to spend two-and-a-half hours in the hall.
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It’s not that the other actors are below par. Minissha Lamba is a revelation. The Kashmir climate sure does something to the Yahaan girl. She is the new Preity Zinta and does a better job of playing a journo-at-war than the dimpled darling did in Lakshya. If you haven’t seen Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, you just may like Rahul Bose. He is better in the lighter scenes but then again you can only gawk and gape when Kay Kay is tearing you apart. Deepak Dobriyal (Saif’s sidekick Rajoh in Omkara) creates an enigmatic Javed Khan who has all but two lines in the entire film. His last freeze-frame is sure to stay with you.
Shaurya deserves a dekko — and a better marketing campaign. The promos without a taste of the Kay Kay thunder need to be court-martialled.
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Illusions galore
Pavan Kaul’s second coming — after an apology of a film called Sssshhh — is engaging in parts. It is the screenplay that stops the progress of Bhram. There are too many loose ends tied up in a hurry. It gets predictable after the second half, spoiling much of the thrill. It could have so easily been more crisp and cutting-edge to keep the ‘illusion’ alive.
The dialogue and the treatment are unnecessarily bold. But cinematographer Hiroo Keshwani does a very good job. The final scene is breathtakingly shot in a beautiful location, bringing alive the pain of the moment.
The music works, with Pritam once again importing a Bong song to Bollywood — the Hindi rendition of Ghare pherar gaan (Mohiner Ghoraguli) sung by Sonu Nigam (Jaane kyon).
Sheetal Menon is too much of a model to fit the Bollywood heroine frame. But since she plays a supermodel here, she does, for this film at least. Dino Morea is interesting. A substantial role for Milind Soman after a long time and he is able to arrest attention (yes, with his locks too) every time he is on screen. But Simone Singh is undoubtedly the most natural.
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Pre-interval the story focuses on Sheetal, who carries the trauma of seeing her sister being raped and eventually killed, when she was a 10-year-old. She grows up a complete cynic. Dino breathes life back into her only to be dealt a cruel blow by his own family. To establish the bhram bit all the characters are kept in various stages of confusion only to arrive at the point from which it had all begun.
Bhram doesn’t irritate, neither do you fidget in your seat, nor do you run away.... But it does create an illusion of a watchable film, and at the end you are left unsatisfied.
Maybe, just maybe, Kaul will get it right the third time.
Or is that too an illusion?
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Remember the constant shifting of the booster to get a clearer picture of Pakistani serials? Well, those were the days. In the last couple of decades it’s been only our neighbouring country that has got a taste of our stuff thanks to pirated VCDs and DVDs. Khuda Kay Liye, that’s changed!
Half an hour into the film you know why. An arresting probe into the plight of Pakistanis from Lahore to London, Afghanistan to America, Khuda Kay Liye is definitely what the (heart) doctor ordered. Maybe a tad too late, but at least it’s here.
It starts off from this one Pakistani family in Lahore where two musician brothers lead very different lives. One impressionable mind falls prey to the preachings of the neighbourhood maulvi while the other travels to Chicago to study music. He falls in love with an American while the younger brother marries his cousin against her will in a village on the Afghanistan border to stop her from settling down with her British boyfriend.
What follows are inter-cutting images of lives led in freedom and exile and how a single event — easy to guess which one — turns their worlds upside down. It is left to the most influential maulvi in Lahore to reinterpret the words of the Quran and make the religious fanatics see sense. The Pakistani in America is not that lucky, though.
Yes, the script is simplified, the climax is way too long, the dubbing is pathetic and some actors are unwatchable but Khuda Kay Liye’s heart is just in the right place. There is an overdose of references to religious texts but even that doesn’t come in the way of the watch. The brilliant musical score kind of blends it all in.
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Shaan, Pakistani’s SRK, is effective as the battered big brother while Iman Ali as the damsel in distress looks stunning and has an electric screen presence. She is certainly Bollywood’s next import. Naseeruddin Shah gets one scene and you needed someone like him to deliver the voice — and eyes — of reason.
Watch Khuda Kay Liye not in the name of god, but because it speaks straight from the heart.
